On November 26, 1977, just as the people of Southern England were settling in to watch the early evening news the sound cut out. A voice began speaking over the visual of the continuing evening news, the words almost inaudible through the crackling interference surrounding it. “This is the voice of Asteron,” the man said. “I am an authorized representative of the intergalactic mission, and I have a message for the planet Earth.” He went on to warn that times were changing, and that the people of Earth must learn to live together in peace or “leave the galaxy.” The broadcast sound returned and Asteron was never heard from again.
BBC’s Southern Television was especially prone to this kind of signal intrusion. Unlike much of the television system, which was broadcast via cables in the ground, Southern Television still utilized and over the air UHF signal to carry the channel. It is posited that some prankster took another UHF transmitter near the BBC’s transmitter and simply broadcast a stronger signal on the same frequency. It wouldn’t have taken an especially powerful transmitter to do this, and it would allow the prankster to override the audio signal and broadcast his own message. Additionally, due to the fact that this had never happened before and the BBC had no measures for reacting to signal intrusion, there was no real way of shutting it off or finding out who actually sent the message. There are, of course, those who believe the message actually was from outer space, but the fact that it only appeared on Southern England television leaves you to wonder why a race with advanced technology wouldn’t be capable of more.
This signal intrusion is just one example of what used to be a more common phenomenon. Around a decade later in the United States, perhaps one of the most memorable signal intrusions happened when two channels were fully overridden by a deranged hacker. During the late evening news, the video cut out and was replaced by a man wearing a Max Headroom mask and bobbing his head around the screen. There was no sound, and the video intrusion lasted only 30 seconds as engineers had the ability to switch the broadcast tower and neutralize the attack. The intruder wasn’t finished, however, and chose another channel to go after. About two hours later he broke into a re-run of an episode of Doctor Who and was able not only to get both audio and video this time, but commanded the airwaves for the better part of two minutes. It was bizarre. The man made references to New Coke, for which the real Max Headroom was a mascot, and then began humming the theme song of an obscure 1960’s cartoon called Clutch Cargo. He flashed his fingers at the screen, and then put on a glove while commenting to the camera that it looked dirty. Finally, the man stood up and received a spanking from an accomplice before the transmission cut out and returned to Doctor Who.
The engineers at the intruded station were powerless to stop this signal override. The man in the mask could have gone on as long as he liked making nonsensical statements, but it would seem he ran out of material. While little can be ascertained about his motives, it would seem that he had intended on holding the airwaves on the first channel much longer, as he made reference to the network name and even to the news anchor he’d overridden. But when his attack was thwarted, he simply attacked another channel and made the planned statements anyway. His identity was never discovered. Given that television technology, at least in the western world, has largely switched to digital signal, it’s unlikely that hackers are sophisticated enough to override it, meaning that the days of signal intrusion are over. Even if it was still possible to do, with the broad sweeping audience of the internet, television might not be the best medium anymore for carrying crazy messages to the world.